#salon

Art the community tagged “salon” — see what people make of it.

Erisava Staff Jul 20

The Birth of Venus by Alexandre Cabanel, 1863

Content Warning

Nudity

The Birth of Venus

Musée d'Orsay · wikidata.org

Public domain

About as approved-of as painting got at the time — the emperor apparently bought it straight off the Salon wall. Two years later Manet showed a nude in a not-so-different pose and Paris was outraged, which suggests the rule was never really about bare skin, but about who was allowed to be bare.